Children: Being Outdoors vs. Nearsightedness?

[DBT]

Once upon a time it was bread and the Circus/Arena for the great unwashed, now it's Facebook and Twitter.....an improvement.

 

[Jokodo]

Once upon a time it was bread and the Circus/Arena for the great unwashed, now it's Facebook and Twitter.....an improvement.

I can't quite tell whether you're being sarcastic, but yes, quite an improvement

 

[ronburgundy]

Video games promote problem solving, team work, and eye hand coordination.

Hey, Do have a reference showing causal impact of gaming on actual hand-eye coordination in non-virtual environments? IOW, does it make a person better at catch or hitting an actual baseball?

All the studies I can find only measure a very specific and narrow type of hand-eye coordination, namely in the same 2-D computer gaming context as the games themselves. IOW, playing one game makes you better at other computer games. There is a critical difference between the type of coordination there versus the "real world". With a computer game, you are not actually coordinating your hand movements toward the visual object. Rather you are making tiny finger movements on a different plane where the direction does not correspond to the actual direction of the object in the visual field. The parts of the motor cortex involved are different for "catching a ball" in a computer game vs. catching and actual ball coming at you. So, it's plausible that gaming has either no or even negative impact on hand-eye coordination outside of virtual environments.

True, if we ignore the entire genre of VR gaming... but that is fine to ignore since it is not so prevalent yet.

Just like playing baseball fails to properly prepare you with the coordination and skills associated with getting any job whatsoever... or playing any other game, for that matter, whatsoever. Learning to move an analog controller helps you... wait for it.... learn to move an analog controller.

List for me the professions that baseball prepare you for, or any skill that can be used outside the diamond, and for each one, I will list 10 professions that a video game of my choosing prepare you for. There may be overlap.
The game itself teaches the other things I have been mentioning.. except for crap games.. like how crap books don't teach you anything either.

I don't know why your reacting like I have a dog in this fight as though I think baseball is superior to video games. I just asked an honest question about whether it is valid to claim evidence of improvements in "hand-eye coordination" in general without qualification that it might only help and could possibly harm many types of hand-eye and body-eye coordination in real world environments.

Also, why would playing particular video games improve tasks using an analog controller in general, but baseball only improve baseball? By analogy (ha!), baseball should improve any task that involves tracking objects in 3 D space, moving your hand (or body) toward those objects in space, etc., plus any task where strength and fitness are benefits. It doesn't matter if those tasks/professions entail more than these things. If they depend just partly on these things, then a physical sport like baseball would give some improvement to net performance.

BTW, studies comparing heavy gamers to non-gamers are meaningless. They just show that people with greater innate abilities at analog controllers like to play video games. That is what most studies amount to, though I saw 1 that did do an actual causal experiment where non gamers were assigned to either play a game of do some other mental task and it helped them better perform some later task using a mouse to maintain a dot in an ever moving box.

 

[DBT]

Once upon a time it was bread and the Circus/Arena for the great unwashed, now it's Facebook and Twitter.....an improvement.

I can't quite tell whether you're being sarcastic, but yes, quite an improvement

There was a drop or two of sarcasm, maybe even a spoonful of irony....

 

[steve_bank]

Once upon a time it was bread and the Circus/Arena for the great unwashed, now it's Facebook and Twitter.....an improvement.

History may show the comparison to be not too far off.

 

[steve_bank]

Baseball and sports in general, even informal neighborhood sports, has always been considered preparation for life. Including jobs.

Teamwork, leadership, physical stamina, concentration, coping with failure, working over time to achieve a goal and so on. Socialization.

The rise in childhood attention deficit disorder has a cause somewhere.

I watched a news segment where a businessman was saying high school grads today do not have the same ability to self organize. They require structure and attention past generations did not.

Sports is about self organizing groups. Kids used to go out in the morning, hook up with other kids, figure out something to do all by themselves. Compare that to staring at a video screen.

Video games are prepackaged requiring little work to learn. Junk food entertainment.

Bill Gates himself said he thought computers should not be used below a certain grade level. It interferes with the development process. How will communicating in limited text messages affect ability to think and communicate in depth?

The brain is wring itself based on the environment as we grow.

I was babysitting for friends and had their kid out in the yard. There was a rock about 2 feet around. She crawled towards it pausing periodically reaching out a hand trying to feel it. When she got to it she explored it by touch. She was learning to gauge distance.

It is all a great experiment and we are our own lab rats. Teenage drug addicts and alcoholics has become a reality.Something has changed in how kids develop.

 

[Jokodo]

Once upon a time it was bread and the Circus/Arena for the great unwashed, now it's Facebook and Twitter.....an improvement.

I can't quite tell whether you're being sarcastic, but yes, quite an improvement

There was a drop or two of sarcasm, maybe even a spoonful of irony....

You can be sarcastic about it until the cows come home, but the closing of the global digital divide is actually one of the big achievements of the 2010s. That "Facebook and Twitter" are even available to "the great unwashed" is a quite remarkable progress even from the perspective of 10 years ago.

In 2010, only 2.7% of Ivorians used the internet, about 1/30 of the figure for their former colonial masters, France. In 2017 (latest reliable figures), the figure was 44% and growing, already more than half of France's value. (source: World Bank).

 

[DBT]

There was a drop or two of sarcasm, maybe even a spoonful of irony....

You can be sarcastic about it until the cows come home, but the closing of the global digital divide is actually one of the big achievements of the 2010s. That "Facebook and Twitter" are even available to "the great unwashed" is a quite remarkable progress even from the perspective of 10 years ago.

In 2010, only 2.7% of Ivorians used the internet, about 1/30 of the figure for their former colonial masters, France. In 2017 (latest reliable figures), the figure was 44% and growing, already more than half of France's value. (source: World Bank).

Perhaps even a dollop of humour, I should have mentioned, an ingredient that is sometimes in short supply.

 

[bilby]

Baseball and sports in general, even informal neighborhood sports, has always been considered preparation for life. Including jobs.

If by 'always' you mean 'since the 19th century'. That's about 1% of the history of humanity

Teamwork, leadership, physical stamina, concentration, coping with failure, working over time to achieve a goal and so on. Socialization.

In short, preparation for military service, or factory work. Very much a post Industrial Revolution concern.

The rise in childhood attention deficit disorder has a cause somewhere.

Perhaps. But this ain't it.

Unless you have a peer reviewed study that you recently published and won some awards for? Because it would have to win some serious accolades, as it would have overturned current thinking on the subject. So, do you have a link to it?

Thought not.

I watched a news segment where a businessman was saying high school grads today do not have the same ability to self organize. They require structure and attention past generations did not.

Oh, well; If you watched a news segment, clearly you are an authority on the subject

Old people have been saying this about young people for all of recorded history.

Sports is about self organizing groups. Kids used to go out in the morning, hook up with other kids, figure out something to do all by themselves. Compare that to staring at a video screen.

Multiplayer online video games do this on a VASTLY bigger scale than sports. But you wouldn't know that because you stopped learning about video games in the 1980s - and yet still fondly imagine yourself an authority on the subject.

Video games are prepackaged requiring little work to learn. Junk food entertainment.

Again, it's not 1986 anymore. Perhaps you should learn about the topic before offering your opinions as though they were of any value.

Bill Gates himself said he thought computers should not be used below a certain grade level. It interferes with the development process. How will communicating in limited text messages affect ability to think and communicate in depth?

Ask Samuel Morse.

Again, adults have worried about new technologies causing educational poverty since the Sumerians.

The brain is wring itself based on the environment as we grow.

And the modern environment contains a LOT of computers. So it would be a bad mistake to limit the exposure of growing brains to those computers.

I was babysitting for friends and had their kid out in the yard. There was a rock about 2 feet around. She crawled towards it pausing periodically reaching out a hand trying to feel it. When she got to it she explored it by touch. She was learning to gauge distance.

Aww.

I hope you replaced it with a baseball.

It is all a great experiment and we are our own lab rats. Teenage drug addicts and alcoholics has become a reality.Something has changed in how kids develop.

Teenaged drug addicts and alcoholics are NOT a recent phenomenon. They have been around for a LONG time, and their numbers exploded in London in 1689, when the Gin Act was passed to support English grain growers during a glut, by diverting their production from bread makers to distilleries.

If something changed in how kids develop to make them prone to alcohol and drug use, that change occurred long before our grandparents were born, and certainly long before the first computers - even the Babbage Difference Engine post-dates teen drug and alcohol abuse.

Your rosy view of the past is pure fiction.

 

[DBT]

Once upon a time it was bread and the Circus/Arena for the great unwashed, now it's Facebook and Twitter.....an improvement.

History may show the comparison to be not too far off.

Not to mention gore sites, where it is possible to see brutality on a par with Ancient Arenas.

 

[steve_bank]

I am thinking of the movie Forbidden Planet. An ET civilization developed the technology for each individual to physically and quickie manifest desires into reality. It also unleashed all the liking hatred and conflict which ended up destroying the civilization.

Perhaps prophetic.

 

[bilby]

I am thinking of the movie Forbidden Planet. An ET civilization developed the technology for each individual to physically and quickie manifest desires into reality. It also unleashed all the liking hatred and conflict which ended up destroying the civilization.

Perhaps prophetic.

Or perhaps just a movie.

Leslie Nielsen was good in it though. Even if he was upstaged by a robot.

 

[Toni]

Interesting that spending time outside would help prevent near-sighted issues.
You misspelled soccer or hockey or basketball.

Not to mention riding bikes, hiking, fishing, roller blading, swimming, digging in the sand box, looking for insects, birding, looking for other wildlife, walking your dog, looking at clouds, gardening, leaning against a tree and reading a book, having a picnic, playing in the sprinkler, drawing on the sidewalk with chalk, playing hopscotch or jumping rope and so on....

 

[steve_bank]

Interesting that spending time outside would help prevent near-sighted issues.
You misspelled soccer or hockey or basketball.

Not to mention riding bikes, hiking, fishing, roller blading, swimming, digging in the sand box, looking for insects, birding, looking for other wildlife, walking your dog, looking at clouds, gardening, leaning against a tree and reading a book, having a picnic, playing in the sprinkler, drawing on the sidewalk with chalk, playing hopscotch or jumping rope and so on....

A man after my own heart. There is also a correlation between strength of immune system and kids rummaging around in the dirt and being around animals.

 

[Toni]

Interesting that spending time outside would help prevent near-sighted issues.
You misspelled soccer or hockey or basketball.

Not to mention riding bikes, hiking, fishing, roller blading, swimming, digging in the sand box, looking for insects, birding, looking for other wildlife, walking your dog, looking at clouds, gardening, leaning against a tree and reading a book, having a picnic, playing in the sprinkler, drawing on the sidewalk with chalk, playing hopscotch or jumping rope and so on....

A man after my own heart. There is also a correlation between strength of immune system and kids rummaging around in the dirt and being around animals.

Um, I’m a woman.

 

[steve_bank]

A man after my own heart. There is also a correlation between strength of immune system and kids rummaging around in the dirt and being around animals.

Um, I’m a woman.

A colloquialism. In context of the times, perhaps a person after my own heart....

 

[Toni]

A man after my own heart. There is also a correlation between strength of immune system and kids rummaging around in the dirt and being around animals.

Um, I’m a woman.

A colloquialism. In context of the times, perhaps a person after my own heart....

No problem, but wanted to clear up any misconceptions. Sometimes, someone does take me for a dude.

 

[steve_bank]

A colloquialism. In context of the times, perhaps a person after my own heart....

No problem, but wanted to clear up any misconceptions. Sometimes, someone does take me for a dude.

Got it, dudette not dude.

 

[Gun Nut]

A man after my own heart. There is also a correlation between strength of immune system and kids rummaging around in the dirt and being around animals.

Um, I’m a woman.

well duh.. you listed hopscotch.